During the stimulating fortnight I was to spend in his company he talked at large on every conceivable topic, eagerly, confidently, enthusiastically, not always accurately, sometimes scarcely coherently, inexhaustibly; with inspired imagination, with dizzy changes of thought and rather alarming theatrical effects, a vocabulary oddly compounded of the jargon he was accustomed to use among his subordinates and the longer, less habitual words he had noticed in print. As I have said, he talked of everything at one time or another, but mostly either in metaphysical speculation or in anecdote. He himself always figured prominently in the latter and it was in these that his gestures became most dramatic.
- Evelyn Waugh, Ninety-Two Days, p.399 in Waugh Abroad
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